Unravel
by Tears of Mercury
Summary: I can warn Darcy to stay away from him. I can be the voice of reason asking Emma why in hell she's still with him. But I can never be anything more than a desperate, drunk tease when all the walls collapse and it's just the two of us. XPanny OneShotX


Written by **Tears of Mercury**

**Rating: **M – just to be safe.

**Pairing:** Peter/Manny… please don't knock it till you read it, and if you give flames, make it about my writing, not the coupling.

**Warning:** Mid/Late season six spoilers referenced EXTREMELY vaguely; the rest is completely AU.

**Unravel**

"What happened to Craig? The two of you looked pretty hot and heavy yesterday afternoon—"

"Shut up," I command, grabbing his head and bringing our faces together. The edges of my lips curl up when I hear a soft moan vibrate in his throat. Hands burn my skin through a thin layer of denim when they touch my hips. The length of my hair gets tangled, sections streaming down my back and creating a curtain over our faces. I can taste the alcohol on his breath, and it makes his kisses bitter. I don't care, though; my own head is too foggy to comprehend anything more than simple human contact.

"You're so gorgeous," he gasps, pulling away to nip lightly at my neck. And the way he says it lets me know that he's intoxicated with me, mystified by the curves of my body and the contradictions that tumble out of my mouth. It reminds me of an innocent grade nine who blindly took everything a tall, dark boy said to her as the gospel truth. As if we're in a fucking church or something, I whisper my apologies in a soft, strained voice, leaning down to unbutton his shirt and leaving a trail of kisses in the shape of the cross. Long, bony fingers reach down to lace through my own, but I brush them away. It's too personal.

Minutes blur into hours, and time means nothing because there's no clock in this bedroom and the blinds are closed and there's that small, irritating crack of light streaming through the closed door. The sheets are thrown into disarray and I know that whoever the host is will be pissed when they go to clean the house up because there was a very clear "KEEP OUT" sign on the door but I pushed him in here anyway; because of it, even. And then he's falling into sleep, head against my shoulder and breath streaming in and out, in and out ever so softly.

"Pick your poison," he had challenged me, eyes shining in the too-bright lighting. Instead of pushing him away or lashing out with some caustic remark, I had glanced around quickly to make sure Emma and Sean were out of sight and accepted one of the two shiny red cups he held in his hands. And because that night had been a night of familiar pain and heartache I chose to indulge in a familiar mistake and asked him to fill the cup up for me over and over and over again. When I stood up, everything spun too quickly for me to stay upright unassisted. So I reached out and held onto him. Somehow even though he was swaying just as heavily as I was and his words slurred together even more than the two or three that I had uttered, he felt solid, real, and the earth stilled for a moment when I clasped his shoulder with my hand.

"Come on," I had urged, slipping his hand into the back pocket of jeans too tight to fit comfortably. People littered the stairs and I knew that by tomorrow there would be rumors swirling about our obvious hookup, but my judgment was too clouded for me to care.

And the grating voice of some nineties pop star urged us to let go and let loose and feel the connection, so I ignored her and held on more tightly and forged a bond of my own making between the two of us.

Corn silk against charcoal; steely blue meeting warmed brown. We might as well have been fire and ice, but the closer I got to him the more I felt like _I_ was the ice and I was drowning in this abyss of lust and resentment and forgetting that just felt so damn good and beautiful, all because of the fire in his eyes.

"Are you sure?" he asked, and for the first time I realized that this was his own small way of atoning for last time, of giving me my opportunity to back out.

"Completely," I whispered, even though I was anything but.

I can warn Darcy to stay away from him. I can be the voice of reason asking Emma why in hell she's still with him. But I can never be anything more than a desperate, drunk tease when all the walls collapse and it's just the two of us and too much pain to comprehend. Maybe we're built this way, not meant for anything more than taking from another human being occasionally. So I rest my head ever-so-gently against his and think about how I'm still not quite sober enough to jump away from him as if he's a leper and berate myself for what Emma, Sean, the entire world will think of as another one of my mistakes.

I hear the people downstairs clapping at the end of some song and I close my eyes, imagining that it's a symphony of applause for me and him. For a moment the world and this bare, darkened room with the two of us in it seem beautiful.

But the door is opening and the harshness of the hallway light blinds me as someone yells at us to get out of this room, because the party's ending and we're not supposed to be in here anyway. Eyelashes flutter against the exposed stretch of my neck before he wakes completely. And now he's rising, eyes still filled with sleep, bare chest exposed. I move into a sitting position as gently as I can, and I know from her face that the girl in the doorway is surprised that I'm still fully clothed. "Come on," I say faintly, repeating the words I used so differently earlier. My voice is dazed in that way it is when I've had too much to drink and I'm just starting to understand everything I'm doing. By the time that we've stumbled into the hallway, other people are beginning to filter out of various rooms, all being herded toward the stairs. "I need to find Emma," I murmur, wiping a hand over my face to wipe away any smeared makeup.

"Wait, Manny…" he calls, and I stop in my tracks. "What does this mean?" I start walking again, knowing full well that Emma and Sean will be too embarrassed when I interrupt the make-out session I'm sure they're having in his car to notice anything odd on my face. And it's better this way, I know; tears and apologies can wait until Monday morning.

"Absolutely nothing."


End file.
